And no, this is not some sarcastic screed on the “Wall Street Casino”. I finally found somebody who could explain the mysterious vagaries of the waxing and waning of the market terms that even an artist can understand. Probably because there are lots of pictures. And because the meat of the “book” is only about 50 pages long… in large type.

It’s more of a detailed pamphlet really.

The author, Daniel Arnold, is just a smart guy who wanted to know how to make his money work for him after he retired. He was an electrical and bio-mechanical engineer who had worked for GE for a number of years. He was good at understanding process and the importance of how the pieces fit together. So, with some time on his hands, he started looking at basic, publicly available economic information and began utilizing the data in a way that developed into a very interesting theory.

He started from the assumption that you always hear brokers and stock houses hammering home to investors. One shouldn’t look at how a stock does over a short period of time. Instead, they should look at the long range performance. But the people he listened to or read weren’t talking about long range trends. They were all focused on short term trends and short term results.

When one looks at long term economic flux, there are a lot of theories to choose from. One of my favorites is a long-range theory from a Russian economist named Nikolai Kondratiev. He was tasked with “proving” capitalism could not last because it was a flawed system. What he found instead was that the economies of capitalist countries waxed and waned; although he did not or could not offer a suitable explanation as to why this occurred.

These findings were seen as having the potential to undermine Stalin’s plans for the Soviet Union, so he was sent to the Gulag and sentenced to death. But, his findings align with Arnold’s findings quite nicely. But, Arnold’s prime cause for the fluctuations are a far simpler, more elegant and intuitive explanation than the ones offered by economists trying to find an explanation for the Kondratiev “Wave”.

Any artist or scientist or mathematician will tell you that there in a beauty, a “rightness” to certain solutions. The pieces all fit; like a puzzle. As I read this pamphlet, I kept having those “Ah, that makes sense.” moments that never came while I was studying other economic theories.

So I’ll give you the most basic and important part of his theory here and if you want to read more you can go to his website: The Great Bust Ahead

Let me say first though, as an artist, I will tell you now, the site screams “SCAM”, and if I had seen the site first it would have been easy for me to dismiss the pamphlet as sleazy profiteering. But I’ll give him a pass. He’s an engineer and may not realize how visual cues lead people to certain unconscious conclusions.

The data he presents is easily accessed through public files at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the CIA fact files and the INS. So if you have doubt, get the information and crunch the numbers yourself.

Finally down to the nub of it.
In a nutshell:

The GDP (gross domestic product) is, in the simplest definition, You and I spending money.

Here he uses Fully Industrialized Democratic Nations (FIDN) as the basis of this data point. The more people, the more they spend, the higher the GDP. And it holds true.

If there is a group within the given population of a country that spends more money, they are the main driver of a “good” economy.

The age group comprising the biggest spenders in these FIDN is the 45 to 54 year olds.

Why? We are at our peak earning power at this age. We buy cars, we buy houses, we have kids with the attendant school, medical, college expenses. So we are also at the years of our peak expenditures.

The strength of the economy rises and falls as generational cohorts come into or move out of this peak earning/expenditure age.

He takes birth data and census data back to the 1920’s and follows the 45-54 year old cohort, correlating it with the rise and fall of the stock market. He has to make adjustments for inflation, but there is an incredibly tight correlation between the peak earning 45-54 demographic and stock market performance.

Until the 1960’s. It took him a while to suss out why the shift occurred. It was the Pill. It allowed women to forestall childbearing. And keeping it basic here, we won’t go into the economic ramifications. Suffice it to say that he adjusted for the data and the correlation resumed its lockstep behavior.

He found he also had to adjust for immigration. He notes that the average age of immigrants to this country is 30 years of age. And once they are assimilated, earning money, making families, they contribute to the upward trend of the stock market in the same way as a birth cohort.

This chart shows the correlations, but there seems to be some divergence in the data. My guess is that if he could find a way to account for illegal immigrants, who contribute to the economy as much as any other worker, it would, once again fall back into alignment.

Sorry about the smudge in the lower left....

I’d like you to notice that after 2010 there is a precipitous drop in the number of people in the 45-54 year old cohort. The Baby Boomers are busting. They are no longer at peak earning power, the kids have gone to college (and come home) and there is a gap of quite a few years until another peak earning demographic comes into prominence.

So, what does that mean? Well, if the trend holds, it means a precipitous drop in the market. It means a long depression. It means a very long, very tough road for people over 50.

So, now that you understand how the stock market works, you can see that we have been trying to put the cart before the horse. Jobs and wages create disposable income. Disposable income creates a thriving economy. And that is simply all there is to it.

No magic. No fractal Elliot Waves. No Wall Street Wizards or brokers who can earn you lots of cash. If you want to get rich in the stock market, make sure people have jobs and money to spend. Then when a generational cohort hits age 40, get in the market. When they hit 50+, get out.

It’s times like this that it becomes abundantly clear that I am either a changeling or an alien-human hybrid. Somehow, against all the impulses of the herd I have been born into, I am completely disinterested in the social life of people who have status merely by dint of being the product of the chance meeting between a lucky sperm and egg.

Not only that, I have never been able to comprehend how regular people can be so engrossed in the personal lives of those whose existence is completely foreign to their own, in terms of power, wealth and privilege. Frankly, it wouldn’t occur to a Royal to look your way if gazes were air and you were suffocating to death.

We are not amused.

A couple of years back the Queen’s solution to the deficit in the Palace heating budget was to raid the fund used to feed the poor. She can’t put on another sweater like regular folks, she has to heat her Palace with the bodies of the starving. Her Ministers had to explain why this would be a bad idea.

I need you to think about this concept: Her Ministers had to explain why taking food away from poor people who would starve without it, was bad. In other words, the idea that it was morally or ethically questionable had never crossed her mind.

This is the group people around the world are obsessing over; waxing rhapsodic about? These people, who have never been particularly talented, intelligent, beautiful or industrious. From what I have observed, their sense of public decorum is about on par with the average “man on the street”. What merit affords them the attention of 1/3rd of the worlds population?

Given that the chances of a mere “commoner” interacting with them in any meaningful way is practically null, I would find it exceedingly helpful if someone could explain in clear, concise terms, exactly why anyone should care about anything they choose to do?

Artists and hoarders share an important quality: we love stuff. It gives us a deep sense of rightness, of satisfaction to have this scrap or that bit and to know we will always have access to it.

It is very difficult to describe what objects draw us and become necessary. But that gut feeling of connection is a common thread.

The difference, however, between hoarders and artists is that very often, artists will actually utilize the things we drag home. Sometimes they become sculpture, sometimes we wear them, sometimes they become still life objects and sometimes we just slap on a coat of paint and call it a day.

We understand that these things have purpose. They are living in the sense that they will change over time. They are, very often, intended to change over time; to become worn and comfortable.

When you put something in a box or put it away for safekeeping, you deny that “life” by fixing the thing in time and space. So, in a sense, artist are the crazy cat ladies of stuff. We take in all sorts of strays, we feed them, we work with them and we appreciate them for the life they’ve had. We appreciate them for what they are and more importantly, for what they realistically could be; without romance or illusion. Because that is part of our job as artists, to see things as they are.

That said, let me introduce you to my latest rescue. An early 60’s era dresser, all wood. Not an ounce of chipboard.

Forgive the picture. Our bedroom is dark and the remodeling is ongoing.

I spotted this lovely as I was driving through a neighborhood, trying to avoid backed up traffic from a downtown construction project. It was in the midst of a pile of discarded furniture from a rental move-out. There was also a mattress(urine soaked, as it turned out), a couple of flimsy chipboard end-tables and some well loved plastic kids toys.

I immediately flipped on my turn indicator to signal the Mister, who was behind me, that we needed to pull over. I made a U-turn (illegally) and pulled up beside his truck window.

The family was still taking items out to their car. So I motioned to an older man among them and asked if we could take the dresser. He nodded, so I started to inspect it. It was passable. But I’d need to take it home and take out all the drawers to see if it was worth refinishing.

We opened the hatch on the wagon, lowered the middle seats and popped it in.

I’d love to tell you that when I picked it up it looked like it looks in the picture. But no.

Mud brown shellac. Decals, stickers, reflectors all over the drawer faces. The drawer pulls were original, but bulky and wooden. The drawers were all out of wrack with various splits in the sides from roofing nails being used to try and “repair” it.

But beneath all that, the lines were clean. It was well proportioned. The wood was solid and whole. Definitely worth salvaging.

So, I stripped it, glued the splits, repaired the drawers and found a beautiful deep mulberry color to paint it. And while I was buying paint, I found some elegant matte black pulls with a fine copper edging that played off the mulberry very nicely.

I did have some issues with the paint and varnish. I liked the flatness of the mulberry paint. But it was going to be prone to scratching and streaking. So I decided to use a satin polyurethane varnish…mostly because it was what I had on hand.

I hated the varnish. It was too glossy and since I don’t have a clean room (or a ventilated one for that matter), I was forced to work outside. So the varnish dried too fast and left a textured surface.

My solution? Mix the paint and the polyurethane to keep some of the flat of the paint and some of the protection of the polyurethane with a slower drying time to allow for the paint to level.

So, yes, I could’ve bought something at Ikea. Something clean and new and frankly, on an artist’s budget, expensive. But this dresser has already had a life, a history. And now, for better or worse, I have become a part of that.

A hoarder only wants to see things as they were. An artist sees things as they were and as they potentially could be. It has always been the play, the tension between reality and potential that excites us.

I ran across an interesting company out of Canada a few weeks ago. They recycle aluminum cans to make efficient low-cost solar heaters.

I thought the idea was brilliant and worth trying to see what the process might entail. This is a perfect project to try with students. And fits perfectly with the Boy Scouts Environmental Science Badge.

I’ll be updating this post as the project progresses, so check in periodically.

Step One: Kick the Cans

But don’t dent them. If you take the opportunity to view the video clip from the Cansolair website, you’ll see rows of unblemished aluminum cans. They can have minor flaws, but it is better if at least half the can is smooth.

So collecting we went. In addition to being a good lesson on renewable energy and recycling, there is something to be learned from cleaning up discarded cans from the woods and road sides.

If you decide to go can hunting, latex or polypropylene gloves are probably a good idea. The worst I’ve found is that folks sometimes use cans for spitting tobacco. But there is always a fear of other unknowable ickyness when you poke around outdoors.

240 minimally blemished cans seems to be the magic number. This isn’t too hard when there is more than one person on the job.

Once you have your cans, they will need to be cleaned. You don’t want mold or the smells of soda or beer in the air exchange. A little bleach in a tub full of hot water should take care of the average soda or beer can. Soap will help with those that are a little more grungy.

You’ll need to de-tab the cans. This can be done before or after washing and is a nice mindless chore while watching TV or sitting around. And, bonus, we can donate the tabs to Sharon Elementary School can drive along with the unusable cans we’ve collected.

There are a lot of urban legends about charities accepting tabs, but for the most part, they aren’t true. We’ll pay it forward through the Sharon School student can drive instead.

117 de-tabbed aluminum cans

So here are our cans in the wash mode.

And this shows you how little I know a about canned beer. I didn’t know there was such a thing as Bud Dry. According to the Mister, this one verges on being an antique.

Dry, Bud Dry

Tonight the second batch sits soaking in the tub. We’ll get those dried tomorrow and ready to drill out.

Seems that scientists have pinned down the system that is dumping flooding rains onto California. And they realize it has happened before:

But there’s nothing new about the phenomenon. What scientists now realize was an atmospheric river in 1861-62 brought California 45 straight days of rain and caused flooding of Biblical proportions, evocative of Noah and his ark. It bankrupted the state.

So they have insipidly named them Ark Storms. ‘Cause how you gonna sell it sexy to the general public if you cite a more technically correct name?

The scientists studying this storm admit that they don’t know if this particular system will end up being an Ark Storm. Time and the amount of rainfall will tell.

In the NBC article, Lucy Jones of the U-S Geological Survey office in Pasadena and a specialist in earthquakes comments on the history of this type of storm. She says she was struck by something in the timing of the storm and the occurrence of a major San Andreas quake :

Jones is struck by the coincidence that California’s last major Ark Storm occurred so close in time to the last Southern San Andreas Big One in 1857. It appears both recur with a frequency of a few hundred years.

The question becomes: did the years leading up to the San Andreas Quake in 57 have smaller (non-Ark) storms, like the one California may be experiencing at this time?

If there is a correlation between these rivers of moisture in the atmosphere and the- long overdue for a major shift – San Andreas Fault line, we would hope that the California Government finds a way to gently remind people to stock up on emergency supplies. Watch the videos in the NBC story to see what they consequences of such a quake might be.

One notes, without irony, that the last time California had an Ark Storm, it bankrupted the state. This time around the storms are definitely not the cause of the current financial crisis in CA.

naked along the side of the house,
8 a.m., spreading sesame seed oil
over my body, Jesus, have I come
to this?
I once battled in dark alleys for a
laugh.
now I'm not laughing.
I splash myself with oil and wonder,
how many years do you want?
how many days?
my blood is soiled and a dark
angel sits in my brain.
things are made of something and
go to nothing.
I understand the fall of cities, of
nations.
a small plane passes overhead.
I look upward as if it made sense to
look upward.
it's true, the sky has rotted:
it won't be long for any of
us.
from The Olympia Review - 1994

in an outlier age
every swan jet black
nests on a sphere skewed extreme.
each day a thousand year rain
drowns misery in empty
bloated bellies,
washing over hearts
that will not wear
and cannot break.
signs and wonders
thick as smoke
we choke, waiting
for one
small
miracle
that can never come.

Boomers, on the whole, just don’t get it. Because, sadly, they never really “got” it in the first place. From the moment their collective purchasing power was recognized way back in the 50’s, every speck of an idea rising from that generational cohort has been microscopically scrutinized in order to figure out how it can be sold to the public at large. They are the Co-opted Generation, brought to you by the makers of Pepsi. “It’s the Herd Mentality that’s GOOD. And so GOOD for you tm“.

If they had been self-aware enough to take control of their own message, they could have actually have been a force to be reckoned with. But having been raised in a bubble that catered to their every whim, they assumed all that corporate fawning meant Power and Money were actually in agreement with their ideals. The sad reality: Corporations were using the 900 lb gorilla as a social and economic wedge; handily stripping out the substance and selling the pre-packaged, easily digestible product to the public at large. And if the rest of the country didn’t like it, the collective ire of a massive generational cohort would rain down fire upon your head.

So we end up with McDonald’s. Because kids on long trips don’t like eating unfamiliar food in unfamiliar places. ad infinitum

Once the pattern was established, it was easily and handily manipulated – for profit of course. And as time went on, it became increasingly easy to steer groups with special interests into their own intellectual cul-de-sacs. After all, wasn’t every egoistic whim they ever had worth exploring in deep navel gazing, cash-costing detail, regardless of the price to society at large?

Whittling away the generational mass, fracturing it, was a simple thing really. By their late 20’s most people’s interests and life path have gelled somewhat. They are no longer a “puppy-pile” of mate-seeking, group-thinking, exploratory youth.

At that point, it was just a matter of seeing the broad trends within the cohort and nudging them a little farther along the path. And this is less conspiratorial than it sounds. Because, bottom line, it’s always been about the Benjamins.

It was the Corporate sycophants in politics who saw the possibilities of using those differences for both corporate and political ends. They married Richard Nixon’s ground breaking political strategy of “us disenfranchised slobs” vs. the “elites” to the Corporate consumer group micro-marketing.

Minor personal digression: Ol’ Dicky Nixon was not attractive, he was not from a wealthy or politically connected family and he was not charismatic. But was incredibly intelligent. And most importantly, he was a political shark. He never stopped moving and he was a vicious bastard when crossed. In the end, I loathed him a bit less and respected him a bit more because of these things. But only a bit.

Fast Forward: Tea Party. The perfect blend of the Boomer ethos of “ME, ME, ME and to hell with how it affects other people” wedded to a political platform, funded by Corporate dollars.

Here’s the interview with Daddy TeaBagger “himself “. And since he’s not a Corporatist, unlike 99% of Washington, he’s pretty pissed that his brainchild has been Frankenfurtered to keep boot-licking Corporate butt-monkeys in power.

“In short, The Tea Party was and is about the the corruption of American Politics and the blatant and outrageous theft from all Americans that has resulted. It is about personal responsibility and enforcement of the law against those who have robbed, financially ****d and pillaged the nation.”

Ahem….. Excuse me. That’s “WAS.” No longer “IS”. Welcome to the real world, where you and what you want are irrelevant. Enjoy your stay. And please remember: It’s a Class War and the Rich are winning.

On a Wednesday morning garden walk-about, I discovered that one of the swales behind the house was filled with water. Now had it rained, this would not be surprising. That’s what the swales are for; to keep the downside of our hill from becoming a rutted mess. With the co-benefit of watering our garden beds.

But there had been no rain.

The culprit was the water line from the well to the house. It had ruptured. Probably from the combination of basement building, power-line trenching and earthmoving equipment when we installed our solar panel array.

I’d like to blame the earth movers; they put a few dozen bees in my bonnet while they were here. But I strive to be both fair and skeptical (a classical skeptic, not the modern fundamentalist sort). So I’m forced to admit that I can’t definitively know what caused the problem.

A ruptured line next to the house would also explain the persistently damp wall in the basement. We were planning to regrade the front yard to try and shunt more water away from the house. Because the folks who built it – let’s sum up their siting skills in a word: sub-par. The house is oriented so that any water falling off the front side of the roof immediately rolls back toward the footing.

Luckily, it seems we will be able to fix a couple of problems with one solution. Even though it means we will have to get a trencher out here. And locater services.

As it happens, our next door neighbor is a trencher/well and water guy. And he is often in need of carpentry work. So there may be some opportunity for barter there. But, if you know anything about dealing with bureaucracies, especially of the power company sort, then you know we may be waiting a few days to get the water back up and running.

So what do we do until then?

Let me begin by explaining the artist’s creed. We aren’t taught this creed in a formal fashion; instead we acquire it through experience. It goes something like this:

We have done so much, with so little, for so long; we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

As a rule artists, and other “creative” types, are the red-headed step-children of funding and budgetary concerns. We are given the leftovers, the scraps with the understanding that “because we are creative”, we will be able to make-do. And after eons of this archetypal narrative playing out like a recurring nightmare, we have become so entrenched in this expectation that making-do comes as easily as a child’s first breath.

The problem was a fairly simple one. We had plenty of water. The question was how to get it to the house.

The Mister Getting a Spot of Water 02/09

Initially I was taking water from our rainwater storage tanks. Two 325 gallon tanks that sit on the back corners of the house. You see, I’m a catastrophic thinker. And lately, as you might imagine, that tendency has served me in good stead.

In North Carolina, we’ve suffered a series of droughts over the past decade or so. According to this report from the Center for Health and Global Environment (pdf) it seems that drown or drought will be the “norm” for the foreseeable future. So I decided to implement some measures to deal with potential water issues . Burms and swales for the gardens and water tanks for rainwater storage.

The water from the tanks is fine for the garden, for watering the dogs, flushing the toilets and in a pinch you can boil it to wash dishes. But, without filtration and some sterilization, I wouldn’t want to use it for drinking or cooking.

Given that, we decided to “run a line” from the well to the house.

This is a much simpler solution than humping water up the hill from the back of the house. The well water is potable and with a noticeable lack of bugs, leaves and other mystery items floating around in it.

This morning I hooked a hose up to the well, switched it on and ran it over to the front door.

While this has all the convenience of City Living whilst keeping the native Country Charm, it could be more convenient still.

Running it through an opening in the storm door seemed like it would move the line into an optimum position near the laundry, the kitchen and the first floor bathroom.

Once inside, it was simple to get all the laundry out of the way. The only issue was being aware of the rinse cycle starting so I could add more water.

While the clothes were washing, I started heating pots of water for the dishes, filling water jugs for later use and as a side benefit I was able to get enough water on the hall way and kitchen floors that they both got a rather thorough cleaning.

I can see why women used to be relegated to the kitchen before the advent of boilers and hot water storage. Heating the water on our propane stove took up a good amount of time. I can imagine the extra time spent lighting and stoking wood fires to get the water up to temperature.

Taking advantage of the hot water available, I managed a quick “whore’s bath” as we say in the South. (Apologies to all you whores who bathe thoroughly on a regular basis) Of course, if I was worried about “freshness” Summer’s Eve could do all that and seemingly get me a raise to boot.

Even before this incident, we had already acclimated ourselves to recycling as much of our “greywater” as we feasibly can. We can’t legally use the water from the washing machine or from the dishes for much of anything. Not yet anyway. Luckily those laws are changing as lawmakers come to the realization that if oil scarcity has caused the problems we face today, they are nothing compared to the coming nightmare of water scarcity.

So we don’t flush the toilets every time if there is only urine. However, without chlorination, you can’t let the bacteria breed in the toilet bowl for too long before the odor begins to “waft”. And after I’ve taken a bath, we use that water for the next several flushes; keeping a small bucket handy in the bathroom for just that purpose.

This incident is precisely why I have been pushing the Mister to look into a solar well pump. Either that or a high end hand pump. We were lucky this time. It was only a broken water line. The next incident could be more problematic.

As for heating the water; if the need arises, I can easily construct a solar water heater. That’s a weekend project made from handy scrap material (well, handy for artists, anyway). But if the electricity goes down for an extended period and we use up the stores in the rainwater tanks, that means walking down to the creek or down to the lake.

Down the hill doesn’t bother me. It’s the idea of hauling enough water up the hill that makes me shudder.

Three days of dishes were finally done. And since the Mister is the usual washer of dishes, they weren’t stacked with quite the same neatness he seems to be able to achieve. In my view, if it doesn’t move, that’s good enough. This inevitably leads to a pile of of random shapes sporting the appearance of bad post-modern sculpture.

As for fretting over the potential lack of a functioning well. Well, here’s the thing: for the past few years a number of government agencies, including the National Research Council in 2009 have warned of the potential for a catastrophic failure of the electrical grid. The general consensus is this could occur either through cyber-attacks or from solar storms.

This past July a “Space Weather Conference” was held in Washington DC. It was attended by NASA scientists, policy-makers, researchers and government officials. One of the speakers, Dr Richard Fisher, the director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division explained that every 22 years the Sun’s magnetic energy cycle peaks while the number of sun spots (and solar flares) hits it’s peak every 11 years.

He said these two events are due to overlap in 2013 and will produce huge levels of radiation. He also suggested that, although it was unlikely, much of the world could spend several months without any electrical power.

I guess he struck a nerve somewhere, because NASA immediately began to soft pedal Dr. Fisher’s statements suggesting that it could occur within 10 years or 100.

And that’s fine. Except for Katrina. Except for the fact that our National Guard is no longer available to do the job it was created for, to guard the Nation in emergencies and crisis. And except for the fact that, as a nation, we’re broke. Not only fiscally, but in terms of vital infrastructure.

I can’t know the future. But I can make guesses based on history. I can look to the consensus of nominal experts as an inroad to seeing the potential for a given event to occur.

But mostly what I can do is live by the Realist’s Motto: Always Hope for the Best (But Be Prepared for the Worst).

In this case, the worst would be no electricity for months. And other than the convenience of a water pump, I’d have to say we’re better prepared than many. And that’s probably because we’re artists.